The Cimbalom Goes to Hollywood: Miklós Rózsa’s depiction of the Sinister Exotic in The Power (Accepted)

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Miklós Rózsa was asked to score the British film, A Knight Without Armor (1937), because director Jacques Feyder considered a Hungarian uniquely qualified to compose a Russian theme. Such an assumption demonstrates the outsider view of an exotic and uniform Eastern Europe. Success on this picture lead to a long career in Hollywood for the composer who is most famous for his 1959 score to Ben Hur. In the 1968 horror film, The Power, Rózsa writes an eerie theme for cimbalom to represent a villain with the ability to move objects with his mind. Few American audience members would have identified this instrument as Hungarian, but they may have heard cimbalom in film scores evoking a sinister Eastern Europe. British composer John Barry first used cimbalom in several scores for film and television beginning with The Ipcress Files in 1965. While Barry’s cimbalom writing is merely an exotic color, Rózsa writes a theme that would have sounded at home in a Budapest restaurant. In this paper, I show how even though Rózsa’s knowledge of cimbalom in Hungarian music is clear in the film, he draws on the same stereotypes as his contemporaries. Analysis of the cimbalom theme’s appearances throughout the The Power contributes to understanding of how film music reinforced Cold War-era stereotypes about Eastern Europe as exotic, mysterious, and dangerous.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Jessica Vansteenburg is a lecturer in music in the Libby Residential Academic Program at the University of Colorado-Boulder. She also teaches woodwinds at Rocky Ridge Music Center. Previously, she taught at Salem State University, Luther College, and Belvoir Terrace Arts Camp. She earned a BA in Music and English from Luther College, Master of Music from Ohio University, Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and PhD in Ethnomusicology from the University of Colorado-Boulder. Dr. Vansteenburg’s research has focused on works for clarinet by 20th Century Hungarian composers and Hungarian popular music at Transylvanian festivals. She has presented at annual meetings of the Society for Ethnomusicology, College Music Society, and the International Clarinet Association.